What is a Photograph?

I have been reading the introduction to The Photography Reader and it keeps bringing me back to a particular photograph. It is an image of my parents with my younger sister. I should say that this was before digital photography and the image was discovered on my father’s computer after his death. He must have saved it digitally at some stage.

In the introduction to ‘The Photography Reader’, Jean-Paul Satre is quoted as observing that a particular image is of Peter who is now in Berlin but the image is of Peter who lived last year in Paris. He questions why the mind goes to the Peter of Berlin through the Peter who lived last year in Paris.

His point is not about the image itself but on the use of it, such as for tokens of family or personal relations. The viewer’s perception of the image will be different dependent on their relation or otherwise to the image.

So, for my image, it brings back memories of my mother and father. It also asks me some questions. Where are my brothers – the image is clearly from a family holiday but I don’t remember the holiday at all. The only thing I do remember is my sister’s coat. Also, my father has his camera around his neck so, this suggests that I probably took the photograph with my camera (or did my father have 2). How did he end up with the resultant print?

Should a photograph bring back memories or is it a memory. John Berger said ‘memory is normally imbedded in an ongoing experience of a person who is remembering….’. If a photograph isn’t altered it is an authentic record of an event but if it’s not in context (no clue as to what occurred before or after the image was taken) it is also not very authentic. I know my image was a family holiday but I have no memory of the holiday.

So, is this a real memory for me? I believe the image is unaltered so does that make it authentic?

I don’t have any context for the image (apart from it being a holiday I don’t remember). We only ever holidayed in Wales so I assume that is where it was taken. Does this make it not authentic?

Assignment 1

I started with a mind map to thrash out some ideas. I initially considered landscapes, which I am more familiar with, or using Daniel Gordon’s work as an inspiration. He makes 3D images and then photographs them. I thought that sticking facial features onto a balloon to give the image some shape would be an option for the assignment.

I am a keen motor sport enthusiast. I am often reminded when looking at images as to how they have features that look like faces.

Following on from my thoughts, I felt that Stezaker’s work would fit in with my ideas. Stezaker substitutes alternate items for eyes. He also joins different images together and cuts a slice out or adds a slice to others.

I firstly chose some freely available images from the internet of well known people. I then looked through my own images to find some car headlights that could be substituted for eyes.

As I was looking through my images I also found some pairs of items that I thought would make good substitutions (a pair of racing cars, a pair of hats).

I experimented with black and white and colour. Personally, I prefer the wholly black and white or wholly colour images rather than the mixture.

I also chose 1 of my own images for comparison.

This image also includes a replacement for the mouth (the expression motor mouth springs to mind).

For the second part of the assignment (using photoshop to combine images) I firstly added parts in a similar way to the first part of the exercise.

My other images using photoshop have a sliver removed or added.

My final photoshop images are a combination of more than one image.

The eyes are said to be the window to the soul. So I considered how substituting the eyes would change the image. This led me to ask myself whether covering the eyes meant the person couldn’t see or whether the substitution was an indication of what the person was seeing – did the substitution stop the person from looking out or am I seeing what they are seeing.

Likewise with substituting an alternative for the mouth – does this mean the person cannot speak or are they making a statement.

The photoshop combined images, to me, are somehow more complete than a single image. Are the individual components telling the same story or do they give a different message. have I subconsciously combined similar looking images and if so, why?

I chose random images for the substitutions but, with some thought, could have used the choice of substitution to make a particular statement.

A reworked image demonstrating this is shown below.

My final images for part one of the assignment are:

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My fine images fo the second part of the assignment are:

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My favourite image from part 1 is Marilyn – the combination seems the most seamless.

My favourite image from part 2 is Katy (the girl in the green dress). I cut and recombined one image and added part of face. This combination works best, in my opinion.

References

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-XnQ2Wsxl8
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Corbyn
• https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/a28746405/scandalous-marilyn-monroe-morgue-photos-documentary/

Exercise 1.3 – Current news event

The brief is to produce a series of 4 to 6 collages based on a current or recent news event. It feels like there has only been one news event for the last 3 years so here is Brexit, the story.

Exercise 1.2 – Re-make an existing work of art using photography

I saw this artwork at an exhibition. I was surprised by the scale of it – for some reason i thought it was much smaller. Marilyn Monroe died in 1962 and in the few months after her death Andy Warhol made more than 20 silkscreen images of her.

My re-imagining of the image is shown below.

Series of prints – Exercise 1.1

Series of prints using combined images – inspired by Helen Sears ‘Beyond the View’ series.

Images from my daughter’s wedding and from a vintage festival.

Helen Sear – Exercise 1.1

Helen studied Fine Art at Reading University and University College London. Her work has developed from a fine art education in performance, film and moving image video work in the 1980s. She started with installation art – making it immersive – where the viewer enters the artwork.

She is interested in the relationship between painting and photography.

Her recent work combines elements of the human and animal world with the natural world. She combines images to challenge the viewer’s perspective.

She has lived and worked in Wales since 1984 and became the 1st female artist to Be selected for a solo exhibition in Venice/ the seventh presentation of Cymru yn Fenis/Wales in Venice, organised by the Arts Council for Wales. Helen is particularly inspired by the Welsh landscape.

Her work is often about the human relationship with the natural world.

Sear’s 2005 series ‘Inside the View’ is constructed in photoshop and consists of combined images of a portrait and a landscape. She creates a ‘lattice’ effect which allows the two images to be seen together – an example of the detail of this is shown below.

This creates an image with the feel of an ‘old master’. A mix between photography and painting. The viewer is drawn into the image – it is as if we are ‘seeing’ the landscape through the eyes of the (human) subject.

Her beyond the view series, whilst similar, presents the viewer with a different bias. The female figures are ‘behind’ the landscape image and feel out of reach of the viewer.

One of the pieces at ‘…. the rest is smoke’ at the Venice Biennale 2015 is a moving image in a beech wood with a figure appearing and disappearing at intervals whilst moving through the wood. The image conveys the transient nature of human life, here today and gone tomorrow. It was filmed over a whole year so also shows the different stages of the beech wood’s life. Sear calls it a ‘projection’ rather than a film and the flickering nature provokes memories of the early days of cinema.

It reminds me of a childhood game, statues, where a person (the curator) stands at the end of a room with their back to the ‘statues’ who have to try and tag the curator.

Whenever the Curator turns around, the Statues must freeze in position and not move for as long as the Curator looks at them. The Curator can even walk around the Statues. The Statues are free to move whenever the curator isn’t looking at them. As a viewer of the piece I feel as if I am the statue and the person who appears and disappears is the curator and I am trying to catch them.

References

https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/content/helen-sear-–-behind-view

https://davidcampany.com/helen-sear-inside-the-view/

https://www.helensear.com/

…the rest is smoke

Meet the artist

Re-Photograph Every Image

Re-photograph every photographic image seen in one day.

My boyfriend took me out shopping (I am disabled and use a wheelchair when I go out). He pushed me up the local high street a few hundred yards. I took the opportunity on the way back to the car to re-photograph the images I encountered on the way back.

It soon became apparent that it would take hours to re-photograph every image. Every shop, noticeboard, telephone box, bus stop has photographic images. The sheer volume is staggering. I was expecting a large number but hadn’t appreciated just how many. We had a deadline to get home so didn’t photograph everything.

Almost without exception, the images were advertising items for sale and/ or highlighting offers. Most shop windows were covered in photographic images – something I hadn’t noticed before. My perception was that shops displayed the goods that they sold but this clearly isn’t the case any more.

I am alarmed – not in the number of images per se but what they are conveying. Everywhere you go you are bombarded with images.

So, I am the type of person who becomes immune to the images – fine when they’re trying to sell me something but what about those images trying to convey a message, Famine in Africa, Plastic Pollution, the Amazon Rainforest fires and deforestation?

What about the other type of person, those who believe the advertising? How easy it is to place a bet or eat a ready meal with no mention of gambling addictions or obesity.

Advertising for cigarettes and alcohol is banned but should there be bans on other forms of advertising?

Assignment 2 – reworked following tutor feedback

My tutor feedback on task 3 project 7 was that, although there was an improvement in inking and registration, she didn’t feel it was a suitable subject for assessment.

I have chosen another image which is based on a photograph I took. This a 3 block print with 4 colours.

The stages of producing the image are shown below.

1. Drawing of image

2. Break down into colours – grey, browns (roof and walls), black

Grey layer

Roof and walls added

Black – final image

Colour options and check before final printing.

Combination prints

Mono print and linocut

Tutor feedback recommended following the old syllabus rather than the updated one.

I have started a combination monoprint and Lino image.

Shown below are some monoprint images.

and the linocut

Part 2 – Reflection

My tutor feedback for this level recommended adding some text in my log about the image (task 2, project 6). I have included a few words in my log. My tutor also recommended reprinting the image. As I have progressed through the course I believe my printing has improved. I have reprinted the 8mage for submission for formal assessment.

For task 3, project 7 my tutor, although she though my Christmas card was nice, she did not feel this was a suitable 8mage for formal assessment. She had also previously commented that some of my work is quite small. I use images from my photography for my work – I have chosen an image from my photo library of a post office housed in a Tudor building. This has been produced roughly A4 size and is a three block,4 colour image. My comments in my blog entry ‘what is a house’ holds true for this image also. I am drawn to the history of a building.